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Radiata Stories

If you’ve played Star Ocean, Star Ocean: Second Story, or Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, you are familiar with the work of tri-Ace, a development group formerly owned by Enix but now part of the merged SquareEnix family. But if you think the Star Ocean series has prepared you for Radiata Stories, you couldn’t be more wrong. While both Star Ocean and Radiata Stories are action-style RPGs, the similarities pretty much end there. Star Ocean as a series has a science fiction setting and owes a lot of inspiration to the world of die-rolling book-and-paper RPGs; filled with non-weapon skills, the Star Ocean series goes deeper into the RPG concept than most console RPGs, rounding out not just fighting skills but all life skills as things that are made more powerful through the accumulation of experience and leveling up. The Star Ocean series is also known for its sprawling, epic, somewhat dark storylines that leave one with a sense of fearful wonder.

Virtually none of that describes Radiata Stories. With Radiata Stories, tri-Ace delves deep into the world of traditional fantasy with royal families, dwarves, light elves, dark elves, dragons and just about every other genre staple you can think of. However, instead of a dark, foreboding epic story, Radiata Stories instead takes a more lighthearted approach, emphasizing humor and character interaction. The emphasis is found even at the most basic level; while in most RPGs, the “X” button is your action button that opens chests, drawers, doors and even initiates conversations, Radiata Stories mixes it up a bit by making the “X” button a kick action.

If you want to open chests, you kick it. If you want to find items hidden in common objects in any environment, you kick ‘em. But if you want to open a door, the circle button is your key to an entrance. And if you want to talk to someone, again, it’s the circle button you look to. However, as you cavort around environments looking for hidden objects, kicking everything you see, it’s not uncommon to forget the controls and kick that traveling merchant, a potential ally or even the kid you’re trying to save. This leads to some amusing retorts about why dwarves or elves don’t like humans, and if you kick any particular character more than once, it can even lead to unexpected and unintended (or intentional, if you like to try and screw around with a game) battles.

Of course, that’s not the only source of humor. You play as young Jack Russell, a prodigy who gets accepted into the order of the Radiata Knights based on who his father is rather than how well he’s developed his skills. This rubs “I earned my spot” novice Ridley Silverlake, who kicks your butt the first time you meet her, the wrong way and the prickly chemistry between the two is another source of humor, though in a “When Harry Met Sally” kind of way that hints the mutual disgust may be masking unrecognized attraction. Naturally, you get thrown in together on the same adventuring group with her, the Rose Cochon Brigade, which starts out performing simple fetch tasks and soon is trusted with bigger and more important assignments as the story unfolds.

Unlike most RPGs, which draw your character a ton of smacktalk for resting to regain hit points and such, in Radiata Stories there is a big emphasis on getting one’s sleep; you are constantly reminded not to “wander around the castle all night” or to stay out too late, since your success in missions depends on being well-rested and ready for anything that might happen. In fact, sometimes the story simply won’t progress until you sleep, so if you find yourself wondering what to do next since nothing seems to be happening… go to bed and see what the next morning brings! It’s a dash of realism to a light fantasy, and a mild parody against most RPGs in which sleep only comes when it’s your only way left to heal, because you’re out of spells and potions.

There’s plenty of solid voice action in Radiata Stories, and plenty of charm, too. The music is catchy and well-composed, and once you’ve been in the game for a while, you’ll develop some favorites. As for the graphical appearance of the game, it’s quite a looker; although not a cell-shaded game, Radiata Stories presents a PS2 world that feels a bit like a pastel watercolor painting come to life. Textures are smooth and the look is so solid and stable, it feels more like a PS2.5 game than a true PS2 game. While Radiata Stories may be a step or so short of such top-looking PS2 titles as Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Resident Evil 4, it’s not far behind the pace, though the visual style is quite different from those two games.

As for the story, it’s nothing deep and heavy on sub-quests, but it’s not attempting to be anything more than that, and the emphasis is on a fun, light story. Sure, as the stakes rise the drama increases, but the humor never goes bye-bye, which is refreshing. And Radiata Stories takes a bit of a hint from the Suikoden series and tries to one-up the “109 stars” concept by featuring 175 recruitable characters. Okay, maybe not so much one-up as 66-up. Be that as it may, it’s a device that drives the subquests and extends the playable hours of the game. Radiata Stories has a tone and approach that skews a bit toward a younger audience, but amid a flood of M-rated fare, Radiata Stories is a refreshing change of pace without going for the saccharin-esque youth appeal of Kingdom Hearts. The T-rated fare has little that would be too disturbing for an older preteen and could almost have qualified for the rarely-used E10 rating.

In the wake of SquareEnix’s wild success with Final Fantasy X on PS2 and Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced on GBA, the company has struggled with its own identity, releasing way too many games that were experimental in style and approach, and ultimately deemed “failed experiments.” Not so with Radiata Stories. While the game isn’t treading brave new ground, it is providing a solid fantasy RPG entertainment that is fun to look at and enjoyable to play, delivering – as tri-Ace always manages to pull off – an action-style RPG that doesn’t alienate turn-based RPG fans because it never devolves into a platformer with RPG pretensions; it’s a solid RPG experience.

While SquareEnix has a long way to go to rebuild its reputation as the premium publisher of the top RPGs to be found on any game console, Radiata Stories is a brand new franchise for the company that solidly takes a first step in the right direction. While more jaded gamers may not appreciate fully the way the game wallows in genre clichés, missing the light parody within, Radiata Stories is the first non-Final Fantasy, non-Star Ocean, non-Dragon Warrior title that SquareEnix has published in quite a while that is actually worth owning. Is it worth buying? Most folks will find themselves saying, “Yes.”

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Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Oct 28th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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